Choices
by kiku65
Summary: Okey dokey, the fifth in a series of six, can be read as a standalone story. Looks at the turning point of AotC.R&Rs keep this place going. Up the writers!


**Choices**

AotC , and another quick look at the choices of a Jedi. Sometimes I get the feeling I should rename these 'Anakin Tales' :)

A review a day keeps the crap stories away.

* * *

Among the Jedi there is an argument that is brought up from time to time between two of the best Jedi in the Order, the idea of the second chance and whether it exists.

Jedi Master Mace Windu believes that they do not exist. That there is no such thing as a second chance, that a mistake cannot be reversed. Once the action is taken, there is no going back.

Grand Master Yoda believes that there is such a thing as a second chance. That the universes constantly renews itself, that a mistake, a mischance, a fall can be recovered from. That the future is clouded because of this uncertainty.

What they believe can be attributed to who they are, as a Jedi who can see shatterpoints it's not surprising that Master Windu would take the view of_ action is everything_, and _what's done is done_. And in the same way, the oldest Jedi in the order might understandably take the longer view of things, that a mistake can eventually be fixed.

How the argument always ends is interesting. Because it ends with both Masters agreeing on something.

That it is the choices we make that shape the future.

Ours. No-one else's.

To be a Jedi is to choose.

* * *

Ten years ago you made a choice. You didn't look back.

Now the consequences are lying in your arms, bleeding and flaming with pain. Moaning with agony that rasps your own nerves like sand, flaring up emotions no Jedi should ever have. Emotions they have spent ten years trying to halt within you. All of it to no avail because they are back, and they are stronger than ever before.

Maybe she knew, back then, why you had to leave. You never asked her, did you? Where she had heard all those tales of Jedi that had lulled you to sleep each night and made you dream of hope. You had never bothered to ask her what she knew of Light or Darkness. Of the Force. Maybe she had guessed even then that you must be trained, known as soon as you had raced your first Pod at six years old.

Or maybe this is just wishful thinking, a regret you shouldn't even be having because _you will get a chance to ask her_. You're a _Jedi_, you can make things _right_. No-one in the Order- or outside it- can match you for raw power, there's no _possibility_ of you losing her, because you're here now, she is safe, and she can't just _die_...

And even as you think that, her lips part in a sigh.

"Ani?"

* * *

_Somewhere inside Anakin Skywalker is a worm of fear._

That's what he thinks at any rate. As a child he had seen little grubs in the street, burrowing into sand and fruit, wriggling deep to the core of things. When he had started his lessons with Master Obi-Wan, learned of fear and the darkside, the image had come to mind and stuck. He had a worm inside him, a freezing cold worm of fear.

_It stirred._

He had never wondered where the worms went after those fruits were eaten, after they had burrowed under ground. He had never really been interested in living creatures- his forte was with machines. He had never bothered to ask anyone what happened to grubs.

_It shuddered._

If he had, if he had been as curious about the small and meek and living as the mechanical he would have learned an interesting thing.

_It swelled._

Because a grub is not a creature in itself. It is merely a stage in the life of another creature, one either so beautiful that beings across the galaxy wonder at it, or so hideous those same beings flee from it.

_A crack appeared._

If Anakin had known this, he might have been interested in which one his worm would become.

* * *

"I'm here mom."

_I'm here, you're safe, don't worry, don't die..._

"Ani?"

The childhood name drops from her lips like blood from a frozen mouth, as if she is too tired and beaten to hold it back. She is gazing up at you, some small animal caught in a snare and looking into the face of humankind, watching for pity and release, or coldness and death.

Inside, storm clouds surface and start to churn.

"Ani? Is it you?"

The name again, a spear to your heart that makes you duck your head away to hide tears. You never let anyone see you cry, not even her. You are stronger than that. You _have_ to be stronger, for her, for Obi-Wan, for Padme - you are the Chosen One. Chosen One's don't cry, they don't feel pain.

They stop others from feeling pain.

She smile's, faint and weak but full of light, and raises a weary hand to touch your face. She looks like she did when you were young, when you had come home battered and quiet from fighting and had pretended you didn't hurt. She had seen through you at once.

"You look so handsome."

Tears are coming, they can't be held back. You can't hold back a river with a plank, or a sea with a dam. But now, in this dark place, with no-one else nearby you do not need to stop them.

With only you, only her, there is no need to lie.

"I missed you." Each word tears a strip from your heart, the fresh pain mingling with the old wound of leaving, and inside the clouds are gathering to obscure the sun.

She never stops looking at you, but her eyes are fading, like the lights in the Temple dimming after a long day. She sighs.

"Now I am complete."

Her voice is content, like a child who has been read a bedtime story and reached the ending, heard the princes rescued from the wicked goblins and taken into the sunset and so is now settling down beneath the covers. Waiting to sleep.

Your heart is cold and swirls the clouds, you know what sleep will mean for her.

"Stay with me mom! Everything's..."

You stop, because her breathing has grown harsher, as she struggles to say something...

"I...I love..."

Maybe after she said that she knows she has nothing more to say. Maybe she knows that you know what the next word would have been.

Or maybe she was just too tired, after the end of her long day.

Her day is over now, and she slumps back in your arms, the lights dimming into night as the story ends, the princess rides into the sunset and only you are left, staring at her from the darkness and swirling clouds.

* * *

_The crack widens._

The worm is out now, there is no going back. It could have been born under the sun, on a clear day with light around it. It could have emerged as a creature of wonder. It could have brought hope to a galaxy about to be torn by war.

_A head appears._

It could have been.

_The split expands._

Instead the storm that has been gathering over the galaxy- mirrored in its Chosen One- has presided over the birth of something terrible. A monster of legend, a ravenous beast that will eat the light in order to fill the dead coldness inside, the cold of a black hole in space.

_The new creature sniffs the air._

Anakin's dragon has been born, and it's here to stay.

* * *

The storm breaks.

It is silent on the outside, it is tasteless, it has no smell, no feel to it, a person would have said it had not even happened unless they had seen its eyes.

They are the eyes of Anakin Skywalker, and they burn.

_The dragon roars._

It is roaring for blood, and you know how to slake it. You grasp your lightsaber and walk.

Outside, you know, there is blood and solace from pain.

Outside two Tuskens are standing guard, unaware that they are going to be swept away in a tempest of more than mere planetwide proportions, that the fate of the galaxy itself is going to be set down a path in their camp. Because even now, with a new dragon birthed inside him, it is still Anakin Skywalker who comes out of the tent with eyes of lightning-fire.

Still Anakin Skywalker, who can choose his destiny and what will happen next.

He chooses. The lightsaber sweeps to the right. And the left.

And because he chose so, as the groans sound and the killing begins, a man he thought lost forever cries his name.

_Anakin!_

But the dragon has stopped his ears, and fills them with thunder.

_Anakin!_

Across the galaxy an old Jedi master listens to the currents of the Force, and hears the screams.

_Nooooo!_

And the echo of Anakin Skywalkers future whispers to him.

* * *

The dragon has been born, and the storm has broken. Now the final game of the Republic is about to be played.

On the one side- democracy, the Jedi, the freedom of the galaxy.

On the other- an Empire, the Sith, a galaxy under a tyrants thumb.

The game will be long, the stakes will be high. Pawns will be sacrificed, moves blocked, players confused and lost on the board. Each side will be determined to win, at any cost.

In the middle stands a Jedi. A Jedi with a dragon, who will choose the fate of the Republic he serves.

He is destined to choose wrong.

Mace Windu would say he is lost forever. He was doomed the moment he struck down that first Tusken, the first time he set foot on the path to the darkside. _There is no such thing as a second chance._

Yoda would take a different view. _Choose, and start again._

He will choose again. Maybe then, he will choose right.


End file.
